What program do I use to downscale and optimize dds files?

[AndyJP]

I'm trying to setup a texture overhaul of the game and I need to reduce some 4k files to 2k files. I did this several years ago but I can't remember what program I used to do that part. I already used BAE to extract the BSA files, and I know I used Archive2 to repack them into BSA, but I can't remember the program or tutorial I used for this step. I also remember there were a couple of files that shouldn't be downscaled (is that the right word?) because they looked awful otherwise, and I think one of them was the interface for lockpicking but I can't remember what the others were. Thanks in advance.

[dylbill]

You can use Gimp. It's free and has a .dds plugin

[pepperman35]

Paint.net would also work and it too has a .dds plugin

[AndyJP]

You can use Gimp. It's free and has a .dds plugin

 

I do have GIMP and that plugin, but that would be a pain to use as I need to do this to hundreds or thousands of files and I think I would have to do one at a time on there. I've looked through the utilities here and I haven't found what I'm looking for, but I might need to also look through the Skyrim utilities too.

[84Cronos]

I'm trying to setup a texture overhaul of the game and I need to reduce some 4k files to 2k files. I did this several years ago but I can't remember what program I used to do that part. I already used BAE to extract the BSA files, and I know I used Archive2 to repack them into BSA, but I can't remember the program or tutorial I used for this step. I also remember there were a couple of files that shouldn't be downscaled (is that the right word?) because they looked awful otherwise, and I think one of them was the interface for lockpicking but I can't remember what the others were. Thanks in advance.

1. Gimp and paint.net, as already mentioned by other users, are nice but there is also the option to use the freely available NVIDIA Texture Exporter which, afaik, comes with even more options and even seems to be mandatory in certain special cases. Then there is also is Bethesda's own tool called Elric which can be found in the Fallout 4 directory under tools which can also perform certain texture operations.

 

2. kinggath has a really nice tutorial on packing/unpacking BSA files on his youtube channel, which should cover everything that you need.

 

3. Textures that are very close to the player or which are highly likely to be closely inspected by the player shouldn't be downscaled

 

4. If you want to repeat the same operation several times(e.g. downscaling with the same parameters) your best bet is usually some kind of batch conversion approach. I know that there is a batch mode for gimp but I haven't tested it yet for the purpose of converting a lot of textures, so you would need to look this up on your own.

[SKKmods]

Take a look at free IMAGEMAGICK which I use a lot for comand line wildcard batch image file format/size/dpi conversions.

 

I have never used it for DDS but they are supported so worth a look see.

[niston]

I recommend IceStorm's Texture Toolbox.

It's very powerful and can do batch ops.